Our journey to repair our boat in beautiful places all around world continues as we install a new aux fuel tank, shop to find the right plumbing parts for the water filter, attempt to install another water bladder, fix our sails, order new sails and prepare for the passage to Panama. Oh and did I mention hauling water? That is an ongoing job. That lead to the water maker purchase, which we will receive in Panama.
The plot to keeping the boat afloat and moving in a forward direction, every now and then, continues. Sometimes portions of fun and cultural experiences are smattered within, but lately they have been somewhat few and far between. There are always ups and downs. Regardless, it’s a stimulating experience requiring constant focus. The difference is it tends to be mostly at your own pace. Consistency is still prudent to success.
We FINALLY received our new Torqueedo battery from West Marine, 2 weeks after the initial order was said to be at the store. We drove 1.5 hrs each way to get it, but man it’s a dream. This new motor and battery are a game changer for our dinghy situation. She barely makes any noise and has so much more power. This gave us the green light to do something fun and we actually went rock climbing! It’s probably the first time we have climbed outside in over a year and it was a beautiful crag up high with perfect temps and soft grades. Tony even had some fun and lead some routes which made me smile! It was a much needed fun break.
Sails!
We have been so highly focused on every other boat project that our sails have been neglected. We failed to inspect them well enough, somehwat due to ignorance, but also because our attention was elsewhere. In a matter of a few days both the main and staysail ripped along the leech tape. I was worried about the main after a closer look. We took the sails into North Sails in Ponce, PR. The sailmaker confirmed, both sails would be best replaced and to reef early until she was fitted with new sails.
The headsail just receive repairs and new UV sunbrella just about a year ago. It looked ok until I was at the top
The headsail had just received repairs and new UV sunbrella just about a year ago in Sarasota. That same sailmaker inspected the mainsail and did some repairs, with no mention that they were at the end of their life. The headsail (Yankee, or High Clew Jib) looked ok, especially since it has new UV protection, so I didn’t bring it to North Sails. Then after we dropped off the sails and started inquiring with Precision Sails to get quotes and a timeline for new sails, we had to climb the mast for some measurments. That was when I saw it, the luff tape where the bolt rope (how the sail feeds into the furling groove) is stitched on was tearing away at the very head of the sail where it’s exposed to UV. That prompted us to drop the sail for further inspection and also the decision to add this to the order. Reverie would be receiving an entirely new wardrobe. Our plans to travel to more remote places would make this the best choice, wait 8 weeks in Panama for new sails and be about $9k poorer.
Repairing The Luff Tape
While we may be still learning, we are prepared. We have the means to repair our sails on board and added to that inventory from the sailmaker with some scrap dacron. Because I discovered the luff tape issue after dropping the sails, this would become something I would have to repair. Not only would it save us money, but it seemed totally within reason to do a solid repair by hand. Between being prepared and some google / YouTube, I had a plan:
- Rinse and dry the areas to be repaired. There were a total of three areas along the luff tape where it was ripping adjacent to the bolt rope.
- Cut lightweight rip repair tape to fit the narrow channel in the leech tape adjacent to the bolt rope, adhere it to add some better material to stitch to and keep the head of the tape from ripping.
- Cut dacron sticky backing tape so it would overlap good material by 3″ or so. Wrap it around the leech tape / bolt rope and caferfully adhere it, preventing wrinkles. This is key because the bolt rope has to fit in the channel of the furler, so it cannot gain tons of thickness with the new material.
- Stitch the material all around by hand.
I never took home EC. It was phasing out during my time in high school. I haven’t sewed anything in at least 20 years, so I won’t lie, I’m a complete novice, but I was quite pround of my first true sail repair! These should extend this sail’s life until the replacements come. Another portion of all this was the extensive set of measurements we needed to order new sails. This required both boat measurments and old sail measurments which we managed to do at a baseball field near the sail repair place. No way to lay the sails out on the boat and measure them. It’s hard enough getting them down and folded in any reasonable manner on the deck. Good thing we still had the rental car! It took us 1.5 days to gather measurments, take all the photos, organize them, fill out the forms and submit them to Precision Sails.
Installing the Aux Diesel Tank
Oh plumbing parts… This may be one of the most frustrating things to find, especially when you are retrofitting new to old and want to avoid ripping every hose out to start from scratch. You will see down below what we ended up with for our water filter project. We made at least 3-4 trips to the marine and hardware stores to find the right parts for this tank, only to learn later that the one that was hardest to find was sitting inside our hardware bin hiding in plain site. Previously we had a 30 gallon tank, and if you remember from a previous post, was quite the puzzel piece to remove. There was no way we would spend the money to weld it and then try and puzzle piece it back in after we cut off the fittings, so we move to looking for a plastic tank from Moeller. The unfortunate reality was that unless we were going to play some serious games taking apart a lot of engine hoses and cutting a bulkhead, I could only manage to find a 12 gallon tank that would easily fit in the space. And even this was a very uncomfortable day of work, crouching under the cockpit, in and out of the lazarette all day.
To add to it, the mess of old wiring not in use had to be dealt with while the tank was out, so an additional 3 hours or so between the two of us was spent cutting zip ties, pulling old wire out and rebundling everything.
Steps and parts required:
- Installing the strap hardware: The tank has to be strapped down for obvious reasons. However, for a cross-linked Polythylene tank, you need to consider expansion. Moeller suggested neoprene under the tank and under the straps on top. Not sure where they think you can easily find neoprene sheets, even in the somewhat bustling metropolis of Fajardo. So off the Walmart we went looking for a excercise mat, a foam sleeping pad, whatever we could find that was the cheepest option to address the expansion issue. We ended up with a cheap shower mat that was sort of foamy, but also had some suction cups on the bottom. This would suffice and it was 1/3rd the price of an exercise mat.
- Hoses: Each hose required thread lock on all the fittings and hose clamps at the barbed ends.
- Diesel out to the engine: Moeller gave terrible instructions and it was unclear which port was out so we had to shine a light to see which one had a hose going into the bottom of the tank.
- Diesel in from the deck plate: This is where we fill the tank. The deck plat had to come out and be re-bedded once attached to the tank with a hose.
- Air line: This allows the tank to breathe, but we needed more line due to the tank being smaller, so yet another purchase at the good ol’ marine store.
- Return Line: This is exclusive to Diesel and this tank required us to convert it. Moeller wants you to buy a new sending unit for this, but we didn’t know that and of course we wouldn’t be able to obtain it. Luckily the tank had a 4th port with a plug in it, so we were able to covert it using that. This was the plumbing adapter we struggled with the most only to find it in our hardware box later (likely from the old tank). It needed a 5/8″ male thread to a 1/4″ barb, since our return line was 1/4″ from the previous tank.
4 to 5 hours of crouching in a ball in a tiny space later and the tank was installed. I cleaned up the wire mess on the tank side of the hole, while Tony helped from the engine access in the cabin, as all those wires run through there. I installed the tank with straps, main fuel out and return line and we switched it up and Tony stuffed his larger self in there for the fuel intake and replacing the air line. Nice job team!
Fixing Our Mainsail Outhaul
The outhaul is how you tension or loosen the foot of the sail at the clew, or trailing edge attachment point of the sail. We new we had an outhaul problem and it’s been a problem since Florida. It was a mystery hiding within the boom and no way to see what was going on unless we removed the boom cap. Basically, we had no outhaul in the traditional sense. It wouldn’t loosen or tighten and was somewhat fixed in one location. We could tell there were two different ropes involved and that something metal was floating inside the boom and cauing it to get stuck. Since the sails were off, it was time to deal with it. Tony excels in this type of task so he took the lead. The main concern with removing the cap is that it has stailess machine screws inside an aluminum boom to hold the cap on. We knew they would be fused together. Two of 4 screws came out easily and the other two would require some force. It is VERY tough to extract marine stainless steal screws with easy out tools, so we didn’t even try. Tony used a file to creat a larger groove in the screw head, sprayed it with penetrating oil and procedded to bang it in the counterclockwise direction with a cold chisel. This went on for a few hours over the course of two days. All the reefing blocks had to be removed as they were also bolted into the cap, plus some old rivets were still in the way and required drilling out. On day two, the cap was off and the mystery revealed, at least mostly. There was a block that both ropes were tied to loose inside the mast. The older rope though went forward toward the mast and was not retrievable. We are still unsure what it is attached to, but we were not about to remove the whole boom, so we removed the pully which freed the one rope, threaded in a new rope to the outhaul via the older rope and cut the old rope as far back as possible, leaving it in the boom.
Discovering A Loose Spreader
When we were installing the radar back in FL, I noticed it seemed odd that the spreaders didn’t look like they had rivets in them. At the time, I didn’t notice anything loose and the boat had been surveyed and rig inspected, so I assumed all was ok. As it always goes, one project leads to another. We climbed the mast to get some measurements, also using it as a time to inspect the rig. Then we found this (see above video). It seems the spreader wasn’t attached to the mast at all! The starboard side one was not moving, but again didn’t appear to have rivets. This would require an immediate fix. Back to the hardware store for a tap and some machine screws.
We had to source the screws from Home Depot, which isn’t ideal because the stainless they have is not as good quality as you can get at a marine store, but Ponce has no marine store that sells hardware, so we had little choice. We got the screws, the tap and drill bit, but later realized, we had no cutting oil. How could we improvise? Hmmm, BLT’s for lunch! Tony gathered enough bacon grease for us to tap hundreds of screws while making lunch, perfect! Tapping into alumninum is pretty easy and way easier than the rivet solution. We have had the toughest time with rivets and have decided this will always be the last option going forward. So my turn, up the mast to drill, tap and screw down both spreaders. It was a relatively easy job, the bacon grease worked great, and the best part was the view.
The marine life here is like nothing I’ve experienced. The water quality is murky, but a nice teal with sediment type color, kind of similar to glaciated water. The life has been abundant and surprising. Climbing the mast two days in a row and I have seen more marine life than I saw in the last 20 years. Everything within no more than 50 ft from the boat. In one day alone I saw at least 6 eagles rays. One group of 3, a group of 2 and a single one at different times. That same day was the first time I saw a dolphin since being becalmed 3 days out from Antigua. Manatees are pretty much a daily sighting, including that day. In the evening turtle heads were poking up frequently and the tarpon were feeding. Today a stingray was flapping upside down on the surface, sticking it’s mouth out of the water 20 feet from the boat. For what reason, we are unsure, but it disappeared back into the depths, so I assume this was normal… That makes it all worth while! The view and the marine life, projects in paradise!
Water Woes Continue:
We have lingering water projects. The main one being installing a filter to enable us to drink dirctly from the tanks on the boat. They get scummy and it’s just necessary to filter it again if we want to drink straight from a tap. For the time being our drinking water has been separated from all other water needs. We have the filter, and we have for a while, a Guzzle H20 Stealth, a LED UV-C purification system. We have struggled to make the installation happen do to lack of plumbing parts, space and other priorities. At this point we have purchased enough plumbing parts to make it happen, I think? We just need to “T” out 5/8″ water line down to 1/2″, onto the outlet of a the accumulator tank, then use the pex tubing to attach to a separate faucet, that also requires an adapter from 1/4″ to 3/8,” and finally wire the UV filter into the electrical panel. This all needs to be done in a very tiny space under the sink. Everytime I look at it and start thinking about execution, I find another issue and we end up at the store. At this point, I’m going to make it happen with what we got.
We have also started installing a 2nd water bladder, or 3rd water tank in our central bilge where the macerator used to be. This will give us a 3rd tank, essentially, totalling our water supply to 125 gallons or so. But of course, we thought we had the parts and we are short 1/2″ water hose to tie into the system… We are using the old waste deck plate to fill it with new hose (yes of course) that feeds through a small rectangular space in the head and down under the snk and through another hole to the bilge. Looking at the photo, that space is pretty gross… Tony took the lead and I helped feed some hose. We managed to get the intake hose on and set the tank up to empty into a jug if we need it until we can get more 1/2″ hose.
At this point, if the dinghy goes to the dock, the water jugs go with it and we pretty much haul water anytime we can. I bit the bullet and ordered the Katadyn PowerSurvivor 40E water maker from a company in Florida that has a location in Panama and can ship it to us. It doesn’t make high volumes of water fast, but it’s small, lightweight, and we can tap into an existing thruhull to use it. We are limited by real estate and thruhull access. We have one thruhull under the head sink that is not in use, but the location isn’t ideal for a watermaker. It could work, but woiuld take some routing of hose to the stern since there’s nowhere close by to install the unit. It runs off DC and draws little power. It will make 1.5 gallons per hour. Better than nothing… Last night we had our first true rain and managed to fill the remaining space in our main water tank with rainwater. That was a nice treat.
While these are the major projects, there’s a number of small things that go on each day. Fixing the furling line routing, adjusting the dinghy bridle for our new motor, and putting the sails back up we had to take down, and the list goes on… Through all this we are awarded with National Geographic like experiences. Each evening the pelicans and tarpon feed all around the boat at this anchorage, and last evening was one of the best shows so far, right at sunset. We are departing for Panama on Tuesday or Wednesday. We will now be in Panama through the end of March waiting for our sails.
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you need to get someone to write this venture into a book when it is all overwith.